Dow Jones Joins Frontier Trend With New Africa Index

Tom Burroughes

11 July 2008

Continuing the trend of investing in frontier markets,Dow Jones Indexes said it has launched an index tracking the stock market performance of 50 companies that are based in, or make most of their money in, Africa.

The benchmark is called the Dow Jones Africa Titans 50 Index. Market participants have direct or indirect exposure to the following 11 national markets: Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia.

The index has been licensed to Van Eck Global, a provider of global investment products, to serve as the basis for an exchange-traded fund. This is the first time that a pan-African index will serve as underlying reference measure for an ETF. The Market Vectors Africa Index ETF is available on 14 July at the New York Stock Exchange.

The Dow Jones Africa Titans 50 Index is weighted by float-adjusted market capitalisation. Each country’s weight is capped at 25 per cent and weights of individual components are capped at 8 per cent with a maximum of 15 companies per country. For inclusion in the index, companies must have a minimum market capitalisation of $200 million and a minimum three-month average daily trading volume of $1 million.

The index is calculated in US dollars.